Students Design New Safety Device To Prevent Falls In Older People

A group of Canterbury students have joined forces with two major players in the health tech and retirement village sectors, designing a simple device that can improve patient mobility and prevent falls as people age.

The device – the result of an idea from award-winning Christchurch health tech company Enztec – was tested with the help of residents from Ryman Healthcare’s Essie Summers village.

Enztec, which designs, manufactures and exports surgical orthopaedic devices, sponsored four University of Canterbury (UC) engineering honours students to come up with ideas to improve safety and mobility for people increasingly dependent on a walking frame.

Chief among the designs students Jackson Crawford, Grace May, Piper Marshall and James McKenna developed is an attachment called the ‘couch pole’ – a simple yet revolutionary piece of hardware to help walker-users lift themselves up to a standing position from a sofa, bed or chair.

Enztec Chief Executive Iain McMillan says with an estimated one-third of New Zealanders over 65 suffering from a fall each year -with falls a leading cause of injury, disability and death - the company was keen to drive research into developing practical solutions.

“Balance for older people can be affected by many things including vision problems, weakening muscles, and nervous system conditions including Alzheimer’s. Mobility can change over time and some older people can tend to develop bad habits.

“We thought, how do we design a product that encourages the patient to do all the good things, such as putting their nose over their toes, helping them go from sitting to standing as they progressively lose quadricep strength due to age?,” McMillan says.

Enztec and the students approached Ryman Healthcare to support the project, by allowing the student designs to be tested on a willing group of its retirement home residents.

”We’ve been involved in our own projects to help our residents remain stable and reduce the burden of falls, so we were very happy to get involved” says Ryman Corporate Affairs Manager David King.

“Several residents from our Essie Summers village happily volunteered to test-drive the walking frame additions.”

Resident Dawn Richardson was among them.

Dawn says she enjoyed the conversations with Jackson, Grace, Piper and James, and is happy to continue helping out. “Absolutely. What else can I do,” she laughs.

“We were trying to find out what they liked and disliked about the walkers they already had,” says student Jackson Crawford “We also looked at how they interacted with the new designs and how they used them.”

Student Grace May says the Essie Summers residents particularly liked the stationary-handle-device ‘couch pole’, that would typically sit by a couch or bed for an older person to use.

The ‘couch pole’ device has been designed with hand grips in optimal positions, helping the patient utilise the strength of their own arms to elevate themselves to a standing positions and achieve optimal balance and control.

Iain McMillan says further work is needed before a ‘couch pole’ prototype is ready for market, but that Enztec remains committed to its ongoing research and development .

“We want to make a positive difference, and have really enjoyed working with the students and Ryman Healthcare to develop these simple but effective mobility aids.”

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